Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II

Dark Alliance II is quite good, actually, but it's absolutely scumbag-y that Interplay quietly rose the price of this and the original DA $10 USD before a sale, then kept the raised price. On an already finished game that's nothing more than a port of the original. That has also never gone on sale for less than $20 except on EGS over 2 years ago. Don't support scumbag practices like this. Interplay, do better.

Bit of a Diablo 1 vs 2 scenario happening here. Also this is a terrible (and overpriced) port. That I've seen other reviews point out, they raise the price even higher during sales so they can charge the same base price, but just make it look like it's on sale. Which is illegal here in the EU, but maybe it's true for Americans. Anyway, what's the game like? TLDR mid (even for the time). Thanks for reading! It just does nothing I appreciate because they sacrificed so much of the charm, atmosphere and clever looping level design of 1, to give you "more stuff". Just like the Diablo series. BTW, that "more stuff" is just a hand full of new items/enemies with what you'd expect for a sequal, new environments/bosses/dialouge, etc. mixed into the mostely reused assests and characters from the first game. I never actually played the first one, but I was watching a playthrough when I was like 75% done with my first playthrough, because I was currious why this series has nostalgia for it? And I felt so bad I paid SO MUCH for what feels like the wrong game! I just kept watching the playthrough and going "Aww, that would have been cool to experience myself", and "Aww! that's a really cool detail they added in". Apperantly the steam port of 1 is even worse than this, so don't think I'm telling you to get that one instead. And this one! Dark Alliance 2, is unplayable unless you do very specific things in another program you'll need to download. And that's just to get it started!! There's a few other glitches and problems with this port. Usually, I write in my reviews what these game breaking bugs are and how to fix them... but I don't want people to waste their money and remaining time on this Earth on this game, so... Game has 2 good dungeons. Bloodmire Manor and the journey from Wood of Sharp Teeth to Firewind Manor. All of whitch are in the first chapter. Lyran's Hold has a really good theme and ideas, but it's not executed as good as it could have been. That's it. The rest of the dungeons are linear hallways with some small rooms on the side. Game does nothing interesting with enemy placement or creature combinations. I watched a guy on Youtube make a big deal out of there being "different levels of terrain", but that's just a handful of little hills on a few outdoor maps. Game does nothing interesting with that idea (among so many others), like you never scale a mountain (Like you do in the "flat" first one!) or even need the high-ground to snipe enemies. You actually can't hit enemies on a lower terrain than you! Enemies can't even see you if you aren't on the same level as them!! You can't even jump off a higher level to get to a lower one, you have to use the designated "slight elevation stairs" or else you jump straight into an invisable wall!!! God forbid I do something other than kill the same groups of 2/4/6 enemies. I gave this game so many chances to win me back. I even immediatly replayed the game on Extreme difficulty to see if anything different happened. NOPE!!! It's the exact same game, exact same enemies and items, just the enemies states are up a bit (notice how I didn't include the items). You don't even carry anything over, exept stats. Meaning I spent 4 hours to get through chapter 1 with my Barbarian kiting enemies one by one and then spending minutes waiting for him to heal, per battle. Completely doable, but slow and boring. Until I discovered you could duplicate items. Then I spent another 4 hours crafting the best armour and weapons, giving myself as much healing potions as I could carry and unleashing what I affectionately call the Doom Slayer build! Now the game can be doable, fast and boring!! Despite the exploit, you still die fast and the game won't let me get crazy with my skills manipulation, with pretty restricting caps on everything except base stats (Except Wisdom, which is capped for some reason?). So I was basically doing the exact same thing, but doable in a day, rather than a month. Even for the time this game was a mid RPG and mid coop beat 'em up, back on the og Xbox and PS2. And if you've read all this and still want to play either Dark Alliance games, I suggest playing Dark Alliance 1 on original hardware (It's like 15 euros on Amazon), or by... other means. Not Steam. Even if you want to play Dark Alliance 2! Do not get this version.